All-China Federation of Trade Unions

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the nationalized organization federation of the People's Republic of China. The union was founded on 1 May 1925, and the organization flourished from 1925 to 1927, as did the Communist Party of China's control over the trade union movement. It grew enormously in the industrial centers of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, but it also had success in other cities such as Wuhan. In 1927, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek ordered the execution of thousands of CPC cadres and trade unionists, and all CPC-led unions were banned and replaced by pro-KMT unions. After the rise to power of Mao Zedong in 1949, the ACFTU was re-established as the sole trade union center, but it was dissolved in 1966 in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Following Mao's death in 1976, in October 1978 the ACFTU held its first congress since 1957. The ACFTU is divided into 31 regional federations, 10 national industrial unions, and 1,713,000 primary trade union organizations, and it had 302,000,000 members in 2017.